


Dispossessed

by ChellaC



Category: Fight Club (1999), Fight Club - All Media Types, Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Living Together, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-24 18:53:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4931269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChellaC/pseuds/ChellaC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being released from a psychiatric hospital, the narrator goes to live with Marla while trying to put his life back together. But he can't help but wonder if he made a mistake in getting rid of Tyler- if the wrong personality survived the gunshot. As they try to move forward, they realize the past may not be through with them yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Fight Club. Credit for the film to David Fincher and the book to Chuck Palahniuk. (I highly recommend his other books as well.)
> 
> This story will reference things from both the film and the book, but differences between the two won't play a major role, so you can understand this story if you've only read the book or watched the film, but I think you should do both just because they're both good in their own way. For convenience's sake, I'm referring to the narrator as Jack, because I like it more than Joe or Rupert. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy, comments and critique are always appreciated as I'd love to know what you think and how I can improve. Thanks for reading. :)

It’s six months before they let me out of the hospital. Marla’s signed me out, and now she’s leading me down the hall, glancing back to make sure I’m following before marching forward without pause. They’re staring. I guess I’m still kind of famous. Having the face of a terrorist will do that to you.

“Are you alright?” Marla asks, staring at me. She’s holding the door open, and suddenly I can’t move. Her head is turned to the side. If we were different people, I’d cling to her, hide behind her, tell her I’m not ready.

Instead I nod, press my tongue against the puffy scar on the inside of my cheek.

“Oh yeah, I’m fine,” I say. But I don’t move.

“Ty-” she winces, eyes darting over my face like she thinks I’ll have missed her blunder.

“Jack,” she starts again.

I shake my head. “Don’t,” I say. “Don’t, just...it’s alright. I said I’m fine.”

“Well, how about Cornelius then? Joshua? Reagan? You don’t want me to call you anything at all?”

“Marla, please, just get me out of here.”

She sighs, and steps out into the light. I follow, squinting, and hurry after her towards the beat-up four-seater car she leads me to.

“Since when do you have a car?”

“Since I got a stable job and started having to drive out here every day to see your sorry ass,” she says.

“No one asked you to do that,” I say, staring out the window as she pulls out of the parking lot. Wilmington Psychiatric Hospital gets small in the distance. Good riddance.

“Maybe I should bring you back. There must be a drug to cure jackasses, right?” Marla says.

“If I get put on one more drug I don’t think I’ll be human anymore,” I say, slouching in the seat. I’m exhausted. Everything’s bigger and brighter than I remembered and my hearts beating too fast and my head’s spinning. I’m itching for the pills rattling around in my bag in Marla’s trunk.

“Mm, yeah, better not. They warned me to watch you around those,” Marla says, glancing at me.

I roll my eyes. “I think I can handle my own meds.”

“Apparently not. Look, like it or not, I’m supposed to look after you.”

“Gee, that sure is reassuring, Nurse Singer,” I say.

“Shut up,” she says. “I’m a great nurse. The patients love me, I always give them candies.”

“Saint Marla,” I mutter, letting my eyes fall half-shut to block out the light. If it weren’t all so overwhelming I could probably sleep here in Marla’s warm car, get my first good rest in days. I still don’t sleep too good. But Tyler’s gone. So now it’s just a bore, regular ole run of the mill insomnia. Which I’ve got meds for too. Finally. And all it took was shooting myself in the face. Yeah, life’s a breeze now. You gotta wonder why more people don’t have mental breakdowns.

“No one knows I’m out, right?” I ask.

Marla shakes her head. “They didn’t want the public getting worked up about it. It’s all still kind of a big deal. Give it a couple more months though, someone's bound to do something that makes it all old news.”

She pauses, then, “We need to talk at some point, you know. About what happened.”

Right. The big talk. The whole spiel, beginning to end, she wants it all.

“You know what happened,” I say.

“I know what your doctors have told me, what they say on the news,” she says. “I know what you said before you got carted off to the hospital. But I want to hear it all from you. I want to hear you say it. Go on.”

I know what she wants. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”

“Oh, don’t give me that. You don’t have to pretend to be alright for my sake, it won’t do you any good. I know a total mess when I see one, believe me.”

“Oh, right. You’ve got a thing for fuckups. So tell me, do I take the cake or what?”

She laughs, a short burst she quickly stifles. Tyler would never say take the cake, who the hell says shit like that?

Then she sobers up and looks at me real close. Just when I’m about to tell her to watch the damn road, she says, “I’ve known worse. You’ll be alright. You definitely are something else though, I’ll tell you that. A real piece of work. Don’t think this conversation is over. I’ll let you off the hook since it’s your big day and all. How’s it feel to be a free man?”

“Am I? Is anyone really free Marla, or are we just corporate pawns?”

She glances over to see if I’m serious. Like hell I am. Who says shit like that anyway? Not me. She does the same stunted laugh.

Then I actually pay attention to where we are and the world comes into focus, my senses suddenly hyper aware. I am- never mind. I’m not supposed to think in the third person anymore. Apparently it’s not healthy for a stable self-image. So my pulse is pounding, my pulse, nobody else’s.

“This isn’t the way to your apartment,” I say. “It isn’t, don’t try to tell me it is.”

“Whoa, relax,” Marla says. “You thought I’d just bring you straight to my place with no stuff? I figure you’ve got a few things you want to pick up first, right?”

She waits a second for me to answer, but my vision is sort of tunneling, smaller and smaller the further we go down Paper Street.

“Jack,” she says, and that just makes me even more disoriented. I’m not used to her calling me that, to her knowing the difference, though she assures me she does.

“Are you ok? I didn’t...I didn’t think it would be a big deal, just to get your stuff,” she says. The car’s stopped, we’re pulled up out front, and there it is. The place is still standing.

“You don’t have to go in,” she says, quiet. Since when is Marla Singer kind, sensitive?

I shove the car door open and walk up to the house, Marla trailing after me.

“Really,” she says. “I’ve got money, you can just get new clothes, pay me back whenever. Consider it repayment on your asshole tax, I don’t care.”  
She’s talking faster now, getting nervous.

“I’m just going in to get some stuff,” I say, hand on the doorknob. “It’s no big deal.”

“Yes, that’s right, it’s no big deal, but if you don’t want to…”

I step into the house. The mildew smell washes over us as we walk inside, and in the watery light coming in through the cracked windows I really look at Marla. She’s put on weight in my half a year of incarceration. Her old bony form is probably pushing 150 pounds. She’s got curves, her face looks healthy, but she’s still got that sharp expression, like a bird of prey. I think he’d like it. I think I like it. I look away and go further into the house, up the creaking stairs.

Marla follows me into my room where I scoop up the crumpled clothes tossed in the corner, a couple button downs and a stained t-shirt, slacks and a pair of sweatpants. Then I look around. There’s the mattress in the corner, a tattered bathrobe. I don’t take either when I leave the room. In the hall I pause, staring at the door opposite mine. Mine again, I guess. So I open it.

“Have you ever been in here before?” Marla asks, and I startle. She’s been so quiet, not a word as she had followed me into my room, for the first time. Suddenly I hate that she’s seen this place, seen this part of Tyler I never got.

“Not much,” I say. “He didn’t spend a lot of time in here, except-” I clear my throat, like I’m in middle school and too awkward to say sex. “Except when he was with you.”

“Oh,” Marla says, and my face is burning. I am- screw it. I am Jack’s mortified blush.

“So...Jack and I, that is, you and I....we’ve really never had sex?” she asks.

“No,” I say, sharper than I meant to. “The only time I’ve seen you like that is when you wanted me to check you for cancer.”

“Seen me naked, you mean,” and I can tell she’s loving this, pushing my buttons, seeing how uncomfortable she can make me.

“Yes,” I say through gritted teeth. “I’m glad this is so funny to you. You’re not the one whose body got dragged around God knows where. You probably gave me syphilis.”

“Well it’s not easy for me either you know,” she snaps. “You’re not the one who....who somehow thought they’d met someone different, someone who thought you were worth something, only to get it thrown back in your face. You're not the one who was used, a whole year gone!”

“I think we have more in common than you realize,” I say, and turn away from her. I don’t want to argue. I walk over to Tyler’s dresser and start going through the drawers. Notebooks full of scribbles I can’t read, tickets, condoms, loose change. I’m surprised to find myself relieved to not find anything more incriminating than the booze and cigarettes. I hadn’t known I’d still be able to care about my body after all this, but I’m still glad not to find drugs or something.

“Look Marla, I know this is really confusing for you, but you gotta understand, it is for me too. This is all really weird. I mean, look at this shit. I would never buy this...this shit,” I say, holding up Tyler’s red jacket. Then I feel kind of bad for holding it out like some used tissue, so I sort of fold it and hold it to my chest. Like a goddamn security blanket. I guess that’s what he is. Was.

She’s watching me with those hawk eyes. But there’s something else there. Something very unbecoming of Marla Singer, something close to pity.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I say, clutching the jacket tighter. “Jesus Marla, if you’re gonna stare at me like that all the time, you might as well just leave me here. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna overdose or anything.”

She doesn’t answer. Instead, she walks over and opens the bottom drawer, pulls out a photo. One of those three-part ones like you can get in the booths by the theater.

It’s her and Tyler. It must be Tyler, because I sure as hell have never stepped foot in a goddamned photo booth with Marla Singer. Except it doesn’t look like Tyler, it looks like me, and that makes me want to hurt something. This is the guy they all saw, the guy they followed like he was the Messiah?

They’re making these awful faces in the photos, like little kids, except in the last one, where they’re sucking face. I look away, and Marla tries to follow my gaze with the photo, but I close my eyes against it.

“I don’t want to see that,” I say. “I don’t, Marla, get it away from me.”

Then she’s touching my shoulder, which she’s got to reach up to do, because even though I’m not the tallest guy around she’s pretty short.

“I know the difference,” she says. “I do. Now let me help you. I think you should, too.”

“Ok,” I say, only at first no sound comes out, so I say it again. “Ok.”

Marla drives us to her apartment as the sun goes down behind us, staining the city orange. She’s got a new apartment in a cleaner building. It’s a little bigger, but not much. She’s already got the couch pulled out, a blanket and pillow tossed over it. It’s a fucking Ikea trundle couch. Figures.

“If you need anything else, just let me know,” she says. “You know where everything is.”

“Actually, I’ve never even been here before,” I say.

Her mouth opens, eyes narrowing. “But...but you said- oh. Haha, very funny, smartass. Don’t do that, like I’m not already confused enough about who knows what.”

“Like hell you are,” I say, setting my bag with the stuff I grabbed from Paper Street and my things from the hospital on the floor by the couch. “You know perfectly well who knows what, you just don’t want me to know you know.”

She rolls her eyes, moving into the kitchenette. “I promise, I’ve got better things to do than play twenty questions with you about your own damn self. So, it’s either takeout or tomato soup. Unless you feel like cooking,” she says, laughing. Which means even if I had, it’s pretty much off-limits now that it’s apparent how funny she thinks that would be. Tyler can’t cook for shit. Not me. So I guess she hasn’t got things as figured out as she thinks she does. Still, she knows about as much as I do.

“I really don’t care,” I say. “Up to you.”

“Soup then,” she says, getting a can of Campbell’s out of a cabinet.

“I think I used to have this same couch,” I say.

She looks at me with an eyebrow raised, like I’m screwing with her. I get up and join her in the kitchen, watch her get the soup ready and hand her stuff when she asks.

“Really,” I say. “I did. I didn’t always live in a shithole. You should’ve seen it, that condo was like modern art.”

She snorts. “Oh, really? And what happened to this condo?”

“It- well. It got blown up,” I say.

“It got blown up. It just randomly imploded?”

“No, see, Tyler, he didn’t like it. He hated it, actually,” I say. Tyler. He creeps up in everything I say. He might as well still be here, except for the awful gaping void in my head that sets my ears buzzing with its quiet.

“Hm. Yeah, I can see you as a condo guy,” Marla says. “Maybe not now. But when we first met, at the support group, yeah.”

Oh, to go back to the days of my support groups. By now the old regulars have probably followed Bob and Chloe in biting the dust. Despite thousands- dare I say millions- knowing my face, it hits me I’m really very alone. Here in Marla’s kitchen eating her soup, I’m with the only person who might know me. I don’t even have my job to crawl back to.

“Are you still going to those?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “I don’t really feel like I need to. Sometimes I’m tempted, but I...well, maybe it’ll be hard for you to believe, but I like my job now. It makes me feel...needed. Even if I know I’m a fuckup, there’s always a patient I can run an IV for. Somebody’s got to do it.”

“I don’t think it’s hard to believe,” I say, sitting across from her at her little table with my bowl. I look down at the red liquid to avoid her eyes. “I get it. Everybody needs something to make them feel like that, or else they- well, I guess they just...haven’t got anything worth sticking around for.”

“Yeah. I mean, I know we’re just a bunch of self-aware carbon and shit, and ultimately this is all for nothing, but...it still feels nice.”

“You don’t have to justify it to me,” I say, pushing my soup around. “I’m not gonna tell you your life is stupid or to quit your job or that the world is all crap. I’m not. I don’t say that sort of thing, Marla.”

“I know,” she says. “I know. Just- just be patient with me. I haven’t got a whole lot of experience with this sort of thing, you know. I’m going to make mistakes.”

“That makes two of us,” I say. I glance up at her and she’s grinning, so I grin back. That’s really got to be something, me grinning with my screwed up face, scar tissue tugging on either side of my mouth.

“Alright. That’s enough depressing conversation for one night. Take your meds and get some sleep, you look like you’re about to drop dead right here,” Marla says. “You can watch the T.V. or whatever, but keep it down. I’ve got off tomorrow and I’m taking advantage of the chance to rest.”

“I hope you’re not taking off just ‘cause I’m here,” I say, following Marla as she gets my pills out of this bag my doctor gave her. You take a couple more than you’re supposed to just a few times and suddenly you can’t be trusted with your own damn meds. Like Marla’s any better. She’ll probably start selling them to her friends. It’s all mood stabilizers mostly. To keep me mellow. Keep me from getting too antsy, keep me from making up any more imaginary friends and trying to send the world into anarchy. Everyone’s got pills for something nowadays. Xanax is practically over-the-counter. People would kill for some of this crap, the kind of stuff they prescribe for psychosis. Psychosis. That kills me.

“No, of course not, there’s absolutely no reason for me to take off a couple days right after you just got released from the mental asylum for trying to kill yourself,” Marla says.

“They don’t call them asylums anymore,” I say. “And it was more about the cult than the suicide thing. Which, hey, I’ve already told you, I wasn’t trying to kill myself.”

“Quite frankly, I’m not sure I believe you. Why would you think shooting yourself in the face would get rid of Tyler? Hm? Does that make any rational sense? Oh, I’ve gotten myself into quite a mess, let me shoot a hole in my cheek, that’ll patch things right up,” Marla says.

“Listen Marla, I have a- I mean, he was imaginary, for Chrissake. A delusion. Who started a cult using my body! Does any of that sound rational? It worked, so just leave me alone, I know what I’m doing.”

“If you say so,” she says. “And you can say it, it’s dissociative identity disorder, nimrod. He was an alternate personality. Geez, you were hospitalized six whole months, you’d think they’d at least tell you what you’ve got.”

“I haven’t got anything anymore, and I didn’t- I mean, it wasn’t- it was just him. I mean, it was just Tyler, that was the only problem.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” she says, and she’s got that same almost pity look she gave me back at Paper Street. If she’s going to keep that up I might really have to off myself.

That night I slip into half-sleep, where your subconscious makes people out of coats hanging on the back of doors but the sound of cars in the street is still recognizable. Marla’s silent in her room and I’m alone. I won’t fall asleep and wake up moments later to go work in the theater downtown, or some swanky restaurant. There’s no one speaking or acting for me, no one to call the shots and assure me it’s all taken care of. This is the responsibility people dread and crave obtaining. I’m not sure how anyone lives like this.


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning Marla finds me awake half watching an infomercial for this super blender with about five hundred settings, half reading a Cosmo magazine she had lying around.

“Good morning,” she says, pausing on her way to the bathroom to look at me. All she’s got on is a big t-shirt and bright purple underwear. “Did you sleep at all?”

“Yeah, a little. You?”

“Mhmm,” she says, closing the door to the bathroom. The shower starts up. I haul myself off the couch to make omelets just because I can. Fuck Tyler. He’s not here so he can’t say anything.

I’m already halfway done when Marla gets out of the shower, wearing the same clothes. She raises her eyebrows at me seated at her table before joining me.

“You made breakfast?”

“No, I got room service.”

“Oh, shut up. Don’t forget your meds.”

“Geez, Marla, I just got up, give me a break.”

“Ok, whatever, it’s your ass if you forget,” she says, but we both know it’s a little more than that. I do as she says and swallow the pills before coming back to the table.

“I wouldn’t forget,” I say. “Kind of hard to forget something like that.”

Marla shrugs. “People forget all kinds of things. So, what’re you going to do today? You’re first full day of freedom. The world is your clam.”

“Oyster,” I say. “The world is my oyster. I don’t know. I guess I’ll look for a job. If anywhere will hire me.”

“You don’t have to worry about that right away,” Marla says. “What about something less boring?”

“I’m not just going to indefinitely mooch off you,” I say. “I know I’m not in the best place right now, so it’s really nice and all of you to let me stay here, but I’d rather not be your dependant.”

She rolls her eyes. “You kidding? I fully intend to use you as my personal maid. And cook, now that your secret is revealed.”

“Oh yeah, the big reveal, I know how to cook an egg,” I say.

Marla taps her chin, thinking. “What about the movies?”

“No,” I say. “I don’t wanna go to the movies.”

“Fine. What about...well, what the hell else is there around here that’s not some grimy bar?”

“Nothing. People go to work or home or support groups.”

“That’s not true. Listen, normally I wouldn’t really give a shit what you do, but you’re really gonna infect my place with this existential aura you’ve got going on, and I don’t need that right now, so you need to get out and do something productive. Wait. Hang on, I’ve got it. Get dressed.”

Which is how I figured out Marla is nuts. Off her rocker. Her screws are looser than mine, because she’s brought us to the freaking ice skating rink.

“You’ve gotta be kidding,” I say, staring at her. She’s holding out a pair of skates, hers already laced up.

“Put on the goddamn skates or I’m telling your doctor all you do is mope around,” she says.

“That’s a fucking lie, Singer, I said I’d look for a job.”

“Oh, come on. Christmas is in two weeks, can’t you just play along for the hell of it? I mean, why not?”

“I don’t celebrate holidays.”

“I don’t celebrate holidays,” she mimics. “And what, that means you can’t ice skate?”

“No. I just don’t feel like it.”

“You’re so good, how can you not feel like it?”

“So good at ice skating? Marla, I don’t know what you’re on, but- Jesus Christ. He took you ice skating?”

Marla’s actually blushing. “Roller skating, actually.”

“I liked it better when I thought all you did was screw. Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously. Look, I’m just trying to help you. I don’t have any idea what you like to do, what will make you less miserable about all this, so if you’re just going to be an asshole, fine, sit at home and read Cosmo.”

“Oh, whatever. Like you give a shit if I’m miserable. Give me the damn skates.” I reach out to take them, and she stares at the scar on my hand. I ignore her gaze.

We haven’t mentioned what we said that time I shot myself. About liking each other, that is. On my part, I was pretty out of it for the first couple weeks afterwards, and after it seemed wrong to bring up. Just another embarrassing mistake. I mean, I can hardly be held accountable for most of what I’ve done for the past year or two, and of course Marla would say she felt the same, what with me pointing a gun at my face. Now that she’s brought me here, I get it. She does know the difference. She just got stuck with the wrong guy. Well, tough luck, Marla. Me too.

“You’re supposed to actually skate, not just walk on the blades,” she says, watching me.

“You’re going to break your ankles doing that. If you’d just trust yourself, you don’t have to hold onto the rail the whole time.”

“I know you live in this alternate reality where I’m this different person, but I literally haven’t done this since I was about nine.”

“But you have! You can, come on, it’s easy.”

“Goddammit Marla, he’s not here.”

But does she have a point? All those things I used to know, that seemed to just grow from some deep part of myself, just popped up as if they’d always been a part of me. All those different recipes for explosives. I knew becuase Tyler knew. So is this the same?

Marla’s left me behind. She’s skating a few yards ahead of me. I try to copy how she’s moving her feet and nearly fall over. But there’s something there, some muscle memory deeper than the conscious. I try again, not thinking about the motions, just letting my legs carry me forward. I quickly catch up to her. She glances over, her eyes widening before a smile stretches across her face.

“Told you! I told you!” she says, laughing.

Her cheeks are flushed red, her hair frizzing around her face. Her eyes are so dark and bright, almost feverish. I realize how fast we’re going and remember I can’t skate. I bump into Marla and send us both sprawling, me landing half on top of her.

“Shit,” I say. “Sorry.” I try to stand, but my legs wobble and I slip again onto my ass.

Marla’s laughing and getting to her own feet before holding a hand out to me. Her face is so open, so much younger than the almost ancient woman she appeared as in the support groups. There’s this whole person hiding inside of her I haven’t met. And then I realize what this is to her. I get it. If I know how to skate and make soap because Tyler did, then I can also fuck her and love her like Tyler did. And I know I was right earlier. Poor Marla Singer fell in love with a delusion and got stuck with me. I feel pretty dirty, sitting there on the ice, Marla laughing above me and still holding out her hand. Like she’s in on some big joke with me that I don’t even get. Tyler’s not talking to me anymore or walking around in my body, but he’s far from gone. Neither of us can shake him.

Once I’m standing, I say it again. “I really am sorry.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. Worse things have happened,” she says, grinning. I remember her calling with a stomach full of Xanax. And now she’s the one managing my medication. Who would’ve thought even Marla Singer could turn her life around.

“I wish we’d met some other time,” I say. I bite the inside of my cheek, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut.

“What do you mean?”

“I just wish I’d known you before this. I wouldn’t have caused you so much trouble then.”

“You wouldn’t have met me at all, though,” Marla says. “Don’t think of yourself like your precious china or something, Jack. Like you’re ruined. You were never perfect in the first place, believe me, you’ve always been this awful.” It’s a horrible thing to say but she’s right and she’s grinning.

A little girl with her hair in cornrows is coming along the rink, clinging to the edge, so we get out of her way and turn our skates in. Marla walks back onto the street so I follow.

“What was it about him?” I ask. “What about Tyler made you want anything to do with him?”

She looks at me with her eyebrows raised like she’s surprised I’d bring this up. “Don’t you know? You tell me, he was in your head, not mine. What about him made you move into that septic dump?”

“No, I was asking you,” I say. “I asked you first.”

“He was charismatic,” Marla says. “In the worst way possible. He was...everything somebody really shouldn’t be, but that you kind of wish they were, because somebody’s got to if you can’t do it yourself. He always acted like everything was under control. He was confident and capable and fucked like some kind of animal. That’s what you want to hear, right? What you thought I’d say? Well, none of that’s why I stuck around. Sure, it was all enticing in the beginning, but the macho man thing gets old after a while. I kept coming back because he needed me to.”

“What do you mean he needed you to?”

“Jack, this is so weird, I can’t. I can’t talk about you like this. I kept coming back because _you_ needed me to. Not a lot of guys make girls feel needed; we’re either like nice watches to show off or fuck toys. Sure, Tyler Durden was a real once in a lifetime kind of guy, but I’m not going to stand here and kick your self-esteem in the groin like you want. Jesus, you’re really a masochist, aren’t you? I mean, isn’t it enough that I stuck around at all? Doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know? It had nothing to do with Tyler, you dumbass. I didn’t even know you were two different...people, I guess, not until much later. But I knew something was wrong, and I knew you needed me, and I knew if I kept at it you’d have to let me help you eventually. There. Happy?”

“Geez, Marla,” I say. “You’ve got some real codependency issues.”

“I’ve got codependency issues?”

“Yeah, you’ve got a real martyr complex.”

“ _I’ve_ got a martyr complex?”

“Yeah, it’s about a mile wide, I’m surprised you haven’t picked up some other sap from the mental hospital years ago. I mean, geez. What was it you told me about the guy you dated who had no legs? Did he lose them before or after you started dating?”

“Oh, cut it out. I’m freezing my tits off, let’s just get back home.”

We get back and I actually sleep for a while. I’m exhausted. This is the most I’ve moved in half a year, and if that’s not depressing, I don’t know what is. If Tyler was around he’d be disgusted. Poor Tyler, stuck in my awful body. I’m the only one who has any idea what he really looks and sounds like.

I wake up to see Marla sitting on her laptop at the kitchen table. She’s got earbuds in and is staring intently at the screen. I walk up behind her to see what she’s looking at, but she minimizes the window when she sees me.

“What’re you watching?” I say.

“Nothing,” she says. “Just research. For work.”

“Oh,” I say. “Ok.”

We stare at each other like that for another minute, then she closes the laptop and stands.

“I’m going to shower,” she says.

I wait to hear the water turn on before opening her laptop. She didn’t even lock it, just closed the top. I figure I’m going to find some weird porn or a wound care video, neither of which I want to see, but I want Marla being sneaky even less.

It’s fucking _Sybil_. Research my ass. I mean, really? I sigh so heavily I feel my lungs forcibly deflate. Then I put her earbuds in to watch the last ten minutes, where Sybil cries and embraces her alternate personality in this weird mind sequence. They hug it out, and then her life goes back to normal and she gets knocked up and smiles a lot. That’s it.

I can’t believe it, I got it wrong this whole time. Violence was never the answer. Tyler and I just needed a good cry, I just needed to hold him like Bob used to hold me at group. What a fool I’ve been.

Marla walks out wrapped in her towel to find me cracking up. Now I must really look crazy.

She’s blushing. “What the hell are you doing, don’t touch my stuff!”

“Sorry Marla, sorry, I just couldn’t help myself,” I say, wiping my eyes.

“What’s so funny, huh? I know it’s not the most realistic thing in the world, but there’s not a whole lot of information out there on this! I’m just trying to understand.”

“Yeah, but really, Marla? I don’t- I mean, this isn’t anything like me!”  
“It’s not? Have you even seen the whole movie? You told me you lost time, whole days even! I saw you Jack, you’d just- just change, and it only took seconds. Sometimes it was minutes where you were just really out of it, disoriented. You’d get confused, say things that didn’t make sense, mention something that happened the last week as if it was yesterday!”

I’m shaking my head, standing up and backing away from her towards the door.

“No, Marla, you just don’t get it. I- I saw him. He was there. You don’t understand, it’s not like I just...I mean, I know he couldn’t have been there, but something, something happened. I mean, we fought! I couldn’t just imagine something like that, entire conversations. You just don't get it. He gave me a fucking chemical burn, I would never be able to do that to myself.”

“Jack,” she says, so quiet, clutching her towel to her chest. “You did.”

I leave her there in her apartment and go out into the night. Walking with quick, sharp steps. This backstreet is nearly empty.

Of course I know everything she says is true. I know I did these things to myself. But no one wants to imagine they’ve done things out of their control, that they’re delusional.

I don’t feel real. The world has gone fuzzy and I’m untethered from my body. Somewhere floating above the street I realize I am having what Doctor Joyce calls an absence episode. Just one of the perks of having a sense of self about as strong as a sheet of paper in a hurricane. I sit down on the curb with what little function I’ve retained so I don’t get run down in the street.

“Mr. Durden? Mr. Durden, is that really you, sir?”

It takes me an eternity to look up, like I’m moving through syrup. It’s Angelface. Only most people probably wouldn’t call him that anymore. Right now I would, his figure looming out of the darkness like some otherworldly creature come to drag me away.

“Mr. Durden?” he says again.

“Yes,” I say. “Yes.”

“Oh, thank God, sir. We all thought...I mean, well, no one’s heard from you for half a year. The news said that you were, er, I mean, that you had a, a mental break, sir.”

“Yes,” I say. “Yes, but it’s ok now.”

“Oh. Well, that’s a relief. See, the others, a lot of them believed it when it was reported you were gone. That you were another personality of some other guy, John or something, and the doctors got rid of you. But we remembered what you told us, sir, about how to continue the mission. We’ve been working very hard.”

Angelface was always a little too smart for his own good. And now that his nose is bent so bad it’s nearly sideways, he doesn’t have anything to hide that cleverness behind. He knows something’s wrong. I know this because he would never talk to Tyler this way. 

“I’m glad to hear it,” I say. They’d kill me, I know that now. If Tyler was prepared to castrate us just so I couldn’t mess up his plans, he’d most definitely have told his Space Monkeys to get rid of me if I outlived my use. With Tyler gone, I’m disposable.

“But you’re in charge now,” I say. “Not everything you heard on the news was wrong. I've got something else going on right now, and while I'm dealing with it, you take over. Let the rest of them know Tyler Durden put you in charge of Project Mayhem.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you,” he says. “Do you need help? You don’t look so well.”

“No, I’ll be ok,” I say, getting to my feet.

He nods and turns to leave. “Oh, and sir,” he says. “It’s Project Bedlam now, remember?”

“Oh. Yeah, of course.”

“You and your tests, sir. Always keeping us on our toes,” he says, and grins. He didn’t bother replacing the tooth I knocked out. Then he leaves me on the street.

 


End file.
